


ALL SALES FINAL.

by iimpavid, It_MightBe_Love



Series: the batmom multiverse [5]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Bodega Cat, Bodegas, Fae & Fairies, Found Family, Gen, Kidfic, Magic, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:49:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28408011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_MightBe_Love/pseuds/It_MightBe_Love
Summary: “I want a refund.”Jason finally looks up from his sandwich straight into one yellow-framed, square pupil. He gestures with a pickle spear to the note taped to the front of the register: ALL SALES FINAL. NO RETURNS, EXCHANGES, OR REFUNDS. EVER.
Series: the batmom multiverse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1045682
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	ALL SALES FINAL.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [a year's worth of microwave noodles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18553363) by [iimpavid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid). 



> Shoutout to Sereneville over on tumblr for getting so excited about this multiverse and requesting more fics contained from within it. I have no idea if this is what they were looking for but I said I'd post more of them this year, so here we all are.

There are places in Gotham that drift in and out of focus like the first few eyeblinks of the morning. Specialty night clubs and pop-up boutiques and food trucks and hotels and parks. There one day and folded down into the pavement the next like they never existed. One such place is _April’s_.

The bodega isn’t quite a bodega except that it does have everything a person might want or need. Whether it’s eggs or kugel or an antique rocking chair or their great-grandmother’s heirloom pendant lost during The War (any war, all of them). The name on its business license isn’t _April’s_ but that’s all anyone seems to call the place when it turns up in Crime Alley or the Narrows or the Diamond District or, once, along the side of the turnpike halfway to Newark. In any case the business license is scrawled on the back of a flier advertising auditions for an aggro anti-capitalist cheerleading squad in handwriting that’s more flourish than substance, _I can do what I want_. Everything is for sale, including the darkly oiled floorboards, but the ancient monolith of a cash register never opens. 

A sign in the window reads: _All fees on a sliding scale_. 

The shop’s sole proprietor, the accidentally-eponymous April, only ever charges a value in direct proportion to what she’s sold, no markups, no profits. She writes out invoices to her patrons in even script, on an ancient pad of carbon-copy paper that never seems to dwindle, she itemizes each purchase and in the payment field, she writes the balance:

  * _1 bouquet of lilacs_ OR
  * _3 hairs from your firstborn’s first hair cut_ OR
  * _27 mourners’ tears_ OR
  * _mouse skulls_ OR
  * _a month-long bus pass that has been used daily_ OR
  * _3 heads of romaine lettuce or a crown of cauliflower_ OR
  * _robin feathers_



People always pay up. Eventually.

* * *

It’s the smell of baking bread that gets Jason in the door. That and the bodega cat. 

He’s met plenty of bodega cats in his scant but exciting twelve years of life but none of them have been hairless. Or had six eyes.

Four of the eyes are covered in a milky blue film, small and spherical like marbles and Jason wonders if they’re some kind of mutation. If this is the result of absorbing siblings in utero. He hunkers just inside the doorway for a moment to rub his hand over the peach fuzz of the hairless cat’s spine. The cat’s name is Horatio, he knows it and doesn’t care to think how he knows it since Horatio isn’t wearing a collar. 

In any case, there’s five bucks burning a hole in Jason’s pocket and the bodega’s front counter is a deli case packed tight with meats, cheeses, baked goods, fruit. The kind of stuff that belonged in Holistix, not a bodega in the Bowery. The rest of the bodega, a tiny thing wedged into the corner of Fifty-third and Lawrence, stretches too far to see. The three narrow aisles are packed as densely as the deli case with dried goods and first aide supplies and books and shoes and lengths of loose pipe. None of the industrial shelving is marked with SKUs or barcodes or even neon green price stickers.

The cat chirrups and trots off down an aisle; turns left between some shelves and doesn’t reappear in the next aisle over.

Jason straightens. Rubs a hand over the back of his neck, more hungry than nervous, not sure quite what to do about the fact that the cat isn’t capable of accepting legal tender in exchange for food. And even if Horatio could he’s gone now.

“Hello? Anybody here?” 

* * *

How she came to be called April is anyone's guess. She remembers a lot of things. Such is the the lot of the liminal. Plum trees, an endless expanse of swamp, her father's drawl. Magic has a way of working itself into your bones. She comes to Gotham because it's the last place her mother will ever think to look for her, and between one hummingbird heartbeat and the next, finds herself in possession of a little shop.

In the scheme of things she expected from her life, this rates down there somewhere near the bottom of 'expectations'. Much like the name she tells people she doesn't remember, and the careful way she doesn't touch iron. t Gotham is in her blood these days, has bled into the streets. 

Like many things, the shop has always been around, and like the shop, so has April. 

It's a fun story to weave for people. The shop has what you need, always, when you need it. If you're willing to pay the price. 

April's never been keen on overcharging. She likes the strangest things. 

It's a Thursday (Thursday's Child has Far to Go) and there isn't a bell above the door. She traded it a week or a century ago. But Horatio finds her, slanted sideways between a shelf and a shadow and winds himself leonine and lanky around her shoulders to chirp. 

She rounds a corner, or the corner rounds her, dust motes and beams of watery light casting her in a Gotham glow. She's never shaken the summer from her bones or blood, and it shows, even after however long in the city. From the honey blonde of her hair, swept up elegantly atop her head, to the tawny brown of her skin. Fairer now, after a long, cold winter, than the summer prior.

Her eyes are very green, "Well I ain't just anybody, but y'all can call me April, moonpie. You look hungry. I was just pullin' some kavkazi fried kurze outta th'oven."

There’s not anywhere to put an oven, not that Jason can see, no alley exit or a break room or cleaning closet. The poster-plastered walls— layers deep with ads and fliers from almost a century’s worth of stage shows and beauty products— didn’t even have the suggestion of a door outlined on any of them. But the cooking smells have become savory, right on cue and half a beat later his stomach growls. 

“Okay, uh.” He glanced over his shoulder. The street persisted outside and through the windows of April’s it looked cleaner somehow. “I don’t know what kurze is but how much can I get for five bucks?” 

She hooked a hand on her hip and took the boy in. Too thin, hungry, wary. Gotham kids always were and every last one of them had a spot in her heart. She smiled, not the smile reserved for adults who tried her nerves. The one she kept tucked away for children. To put them at ease, she inclined her head, "I won't make you go back t'the kitchen. You keep an eye on th'front and you can take as many as you can fit in yer pockets. Deal?"

"I... you're not gonna call the cops, are you?"

"...no? Why would I do that? You've met th'cops around here right? Damn useless all of'em."

“I dunno but I’ll, um. I’ll watch the front. I guess.” If she’s not going to bring up his truancy then neither is he. “You’re not expecting anybody or anything?” 

She blinks, one eye then the other, "Folks come'n go as they need somethin'." She lifts a shoulder, turns, and heels click as they carry her toward the back wall where-- a cased doorway splits the wall. Beyond a glossy industrial kitchen is visible. She returns a few minutes later with a platter piled high with aromatic, savory meat dumplings.

"O...kay," he says, but she's already gone and back and he's still blinking a little confused. "Does time work here?" It's out of his mouth before he can stop himself, "Because that. What just happened. Was not ... normal." 

She laughs, and it's like bells and summer wind through chimes. She puts the plate on the counter adjacent to the deli case, "Help yourself moonpie, an' I'll answer all y'all's questions, I won't even ask for a trade. I ain't been so delighted by a human in a long time."

He's already swallowed a dumpling more or less whole and is starting to stuff more into his sweatshirt's front pocket when what she says registers. "You think you're not human?" That's not the right thing to say and his gut knows it. He considers the dumplings left on the tray-- his pocket's pretty much full but there aren't any fewer than when he started. He looks up at April. Her eyes are luminescent even under the fluorescent lights, bright where they're trained on him. He tries again, "You're not human." 

He takes another dumpling anyway. Eats. He's still hungry and this beats free cheeseand-white-bread sandwiches at school. If something is wrong with them, well, there are worse ways to die. “How’s that work?” 

She's smiling, still the smile she keeps for kids she likes. The good ones. God she's a sucker for kids. She nods and can't quite stop herself reaching out to tuck some of his hair back, 

"Well... that's a story. Tell you what--" she nods, "I need someone t'run errands f'me. Mostly dumb thangs I ain't inclined t'doin' myself. Say... three days a week, an' I'll keep you in food an' shelter. You mind th'shop front for me when I get t'bakin' an' I'll tell y'all about the Seelie . Sound like a deal?" She added, “But, strictly speakin'. No. I ain't human, boychick. "

""Shelter", like what? There's not an apartment above this place... is there?" He doesn't know what Seelie means except that it probably refers to whatever kind of not-human April is. Not human. If she's not just plain crazy there's probably something weirder somewhere in the city than this. "And. Am I gonna do anything illegal? It's not a _no_ but I wanna know, yanno?"

She offers up another of those mismatched, slow-eyed blinks, "Sometimes, maybe--" she splays her hands out in the air like scales, "S'all about balance. S'long as my books stay balanced, I stay pleased as pie. Means sometimes that balance comes with somethin' ain't strictly legal." Humans and their laws. The bane of April's entire existence. She tilts her head and Horatio takes a moment to meow. Loudly. And each of his six eyes blink independent of the other and out of time. 

"There's whatever there needs t'be in th'shop when it needs t'be in th'shop. Or above th'shop."

“Okay.” He’s still eating her food. Gratefully. Enthusiastically. But he’s still not convinced. 

He racks his brain for more relevant questions beyond his present, intense desire to never leave the shop ever again. The shifting food-smell wafting from the vague direction of the impossible kitchen hasn’t stopped being comforting for a second, not even now that it smells a little like burnt sugar, and he’s pretty sure he would sleep under the register if it meant he got to stay, forget the entire concept of a bedroom or bathroom.

He swallows the last bite of a dumpling and it goes down heavy. He needs to leave. 

“How about we do a trial run?” It’s a chipper kind of suggestion brought on by the sudden need to get out and go for a walk far in the opposite direction of this place. “I’ll come back tomorrow and you see if you can put up with me for a coupla weeks?” 

April can't quite suppress her grin at that. He's enthusiastic, which she can appreciate. More to the point, he's sweet as peach cobbler. The idiom _just wants to eat him up_ , while accurate, is also inappropriate. She once ate Marjorie Thomlinson's eldest boy. The Summer beneath her breast bone doesn't always mean she's kind. There are some folks you don't cross, April is one of them. 

She nods, "A'right, Horatio'll be mindin' the front t'morrow. We'll see how y'all feel in th'morning."

* * *

There’s a dinosaur-shaped sticky note on the display case, positioned at a jaunty angle as if it were eating one of the cheeses displayed within. _I’m just picking up some things - left you a sandwich and homefries. Help yourself to lemonade in cold case_ , it reads. Beside the register is a shiny metal lid, underneath it presumably some kind of breakfast.

Jason makes it halfway back from the refrigerated section before he realizes that the note may not have been meant for him and that April may not have been the one to write it. 

He puts the lemonade back.

Perched on the tall stool behind the register, he moves the dome and its food to the far end of the counter so it won’t intrude on his peripheral vision. His head’s still ringing a little from his parents’ morning argument-- Willis is using what he should be selling, the absolute moron-- and the vague guilt that always comes with letting Mrs. Miranda downstairs tell him to “learn lots and behave” in her sharp, stern Puerto Rican and promising her that he will. 

_Technically_ , he doesn’t have to be in school to do either of those things but he couldn’t begin to explain that to her.

The hulking register is polished to a silvery lustre, each of its buttons stuck into its face like cloves into an orange, and Jason’s not got the first idea how it works. Analog in the extreme. 

Horatio, in all his six eyed glory, eels out of a space between two beams of watery morning light. Chirps loudly at Jason and slinks his way across the counter to mash his face into Jason's elbow. Before meowing. Loudly. It sounds more like the long vibrato of an especially irate barn animal. Horatio's very good at making himself known when he wants. 

It's some twenty or so minutes (time either passes in the watery slip of sand in an hourglass, or like the drip of molasses on an especially cool winter day in the shop) later when April comes trundling back into the shop. Hair swept into the sort of elegant updo you'd expect from a Golden Age Hollywood star, enormous Audrey Hepburn sunglasses perched low on her nose, and a boatneck, sleeveless dress. She looks like something out of a film, and not the sort of person who runs a little shop. Unlike the day prior when she'd been fuzzy haired and gauzy-limbed. 

She's too golden to be real in what passes for a sunny day in Gotham. Behind her she's dragging a wire trundle cart, stacked carefully with glass jars. All of which contain body parts. Not all recognizable as human. The glasses slip from her face and her tucked onto a shelf as she crosses the threshold of the shop, and it's as if the entire building sighs and settles at her return. Red soled heels clicking on the wooden floor.

"Oh--" Horatio blinks from his perch near Jason's elbow and April says, "Th'food is for you moonpie. Y'all're welcome to it. I need t'inventory my mornin' errand, if y'all don't mind watchin' th'shop front for a bit longer?" She reached out and strokes a finger up the bridge of Horatio's noise and he emits a pleased screeching sound.

The noises the cat makes give Jason goosebumps. It’s not a bad sensation. He massages a hand along the cat’s folds of loose skin. 

“What’re those for?” He nods toward the jars. He’s seen a lot of weird stuff hauled around in those little wire buggies-- mannequin heads, sleeping children, every free cosmetics sample in the borough-- but mad scientist’s specimens are new. “You makin’ Frankenstein in back?” 

Horatio makes another pleased screechy cat sound and starts purring.

April glances at the trundle, then back at Jason and Horatio and she hums, "It's payment." She isn't certain what she'll do with the body parts yet. But there's brisk trade for some of these organs UnderHill and she's certain they'll fetch exactly the kind of price she likes. She hums, "Go get th'sandwich and eat somethin' moonpie. I'll be in th'back stockroom." She pauses as she pauses to press a kiss to Horatio's nose, before wheeling past the boy and the cat and through another doorway which, previously had perhaps not been there. Nothing in the shop ever quit makes sense.

Even the dustmotes gleam a little less bright after April's left the room.

His first customer comes in twenty minutes after April’s vanished and taken the light with her. 8 feet tall, goat-headed, and naked. It’s hard not to stare at the ceiling-scraping horns but there’s nowhere else to look --so he schools his features into the nonplussed boredom of an average Gothamite’s morning commute and picks at his sandwich. No big deal. Giant goat-headed men wandered into the shop all the time, nothing Jason’s not seen before, this definitely isn’t his first day at his first ever job. Horatio sits beside him purring, corroborating his story: there's nothing to see here.

The goat man— he’s wearing shoes, electric blue Nike’s, _what the fuck_ — steps right up to the register and parts his teeth to hiss, “I want to speak with April.” His jaw doesn’t move at all.

“She ain’t here.” 

“She’s always here.” 

“Not for you, bud,” he says and it feels true. 

“You need to let me talk to her.” 

“You want somethin’ or are you just gonna hoggin’ all the fresh air?” It’s a legitimate complaint. The riverbed stench dripping from the goatman turns Jason’s stomach. 

“I want a _refund_.” 

Jason finally looks up from his sandwich straight into one yellow-framed, square pupil. He gestures with a pickle spear to the note taped to the front of the register: **_ALL SALES FINAL. NO RETURNS, EXCHANGES, OR REFUNDS._ ** **_EVER_ ** **_._ **

“Says here, “No refunds”.” 

No can do. Full stop. Them's the breaks. Tough luck. Any number of ways to slice it, it all boils down to the same answer: the shop doesn't give _anything_ back. Jason knows that’s true, too.

He crunches the end of the pickle spear as obnoxiously as he can. He chews with his mouth open and stares at the goat man who stares right back. He’s pissed off a lot of humans and usually he can catch a flicker about the eyes the split-second before they lose it— but looking at a goat is like looking at a particularly malevolent brick wall. Immobile and unreadable yet somehow still radiating evil. Jason doesn’t see it coming until there’s a too-large hand wrapped around his throat and teeth an inch from his left eye and that steady, furious hissing, “Who do you think you—“ 

From Jason's right there’s a sound like duct tape tearing off the roll. Violet, fleshy tendrils slither over the goatman’s head from the side, encase it, and collapse and begin to drag. Too busy dying, he lets go of Jason. 

Jason scrambles to right himself back behind the register while Horatio— all the cat’s loose skin has rippled out and filled in to the size of something that could reasonably be doing _this_ . Which is working his jaws around the remains of something not human one mouthful at a time from the top down. Jason thinks he looks kind of like Komodo dragon but worse and absolutely way too big to be supported by the deli case. Except nothing at _April’s_ works like it should and the case isn’t so much as cracked by the skin-dragon’s weight. 

Panting, Jason watches as Horatio folds back in on himself and resumes his catlike shape in a series of blinks and twitches.

Horatio gives a questioning _mrrp?_

“Yeah, it’s fine, just. Did you actually just eat a dude?” 

A gurgling, drawn out _wraow_ that vibrates the entire building is the only answer he gets.

* * *

There comes a day, maybe six months into the "room and board" arrangement with April and her bodega-of-weirdness, when Jason comes downstairs one morning to find a picture of himself taped to the wall of missing persons and banned clientele.

The wall tends to update itself at random. No one comes in to drop off reward fliers and Jason's never seen anyone take pictures with the ancient Polaroid hanging from a rusted nail behind the register but every couple of weeks or so there'll be a new face or two up there. It just so happens that this time it's his face under the glaring bold declaration, "MISSING". It's out of date by a couple years, his second grade class picture, the one he'd been missing his front teeth for because, according to the lie he'd told his teacher, he'd walked into a door over the weekend. It must have been P.S. 183 that provided the picture to the police; Mom and Willis hadn't been willing to spring for the prints.

He looks at it long and hard for a minute then casts around the front of the bodega.

He finds Horatio lounging in the heavy sun filtering through the door. "Boss out of the office today?" 

Horatio doesn't open his eyes but his purring gets loud enough to vibrate the scuffed parquet flooring a little. 

It's late morning and the neon "open" sign still hasn't lit itself and that's as good an indicator as any and the dinosaur sticky note beside the hulking register confirms it for him. As invited, he helps himself to an apple juice from the cold case then hops up onto the stool behind the front counter. There's a plate of something flaky and layered with fruits he can't name wrapped in plastic wrap. He peels it open with practiced delicacy, not getting a crumb out of place, before folding up the plastic wrap and putting it into the trash can under the counter. 

As an afterthought he turns and pulls his Missing poster off the wall with a sharp  _ snick  _ of breaking tape, folds it, too, and shoves it into the very bottom of the bin.

The  _ Open _ sign flickers to life with the soft, comforting buzz of neon fumes.

**Author's Note:**

> What would you offer up as payment?


End file.
